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[Miguel Angel Carrasco]

I would like to answer three advaita-l members' comments
to my "There is no..." position :

Dear Ram Chandran,

(Reply to your:    Date:  Thu, 23 Oct 1997 08:13:42 -0400)

Thank you for your kind words and for the beautiful Krishnamurti text.
He was my first contact from the East,
and completely transformed my way of thinking.
>From him I learned not to follow any authority,
to seek within starting from scratch.
I have read some of his books, but I'm afraid
not the one where the text comes from.
Would you be so kind as to tell me the title?

On Fri, 24 Oct 1997 Maadhavan Srinivasan wrote:

>I appreciate your wisdom. My doubt is if one lost his conciousness due to
some mental health problem and after some time regain it then what is your
explanation about these two states?>

Dear Maadhavan Srinivasan,

I apologize if i have hurt you with my "There are no gods"
or "Gods are mental objects" statements.
I am not an atheist, otherwise I would no be in the Advaita-l list,
which I consider one of the best things that have happened to me lately.
I believe in God. There is One God.

Many years ago, I went through an inner crisis.
I found it impossible to believe in God,
in the God that heads the religions I knew,
an anthropomorphic God, one with a history, with attributes, qualities,
moods, reactions to men's sins or prayers, a sort of Super-Man.
I was satisfied with being an atheist for a while.
But soon I saw that this position did not explain the very existence
of the world, of consciousness, of moral values, of the sense of freedom.
So I had to acknowledge there must be a God somewhere,
though I continued to mistrust religions.
I said to myself : If there is something, then first there must be a God.

Then suddenly I realized that one of two:
either there is no God or there is only God.
The first I had already discarded, so there remains only the other one:
There is only the One. Why? Because once there is a God (that is,
an Infinite Being, otherwise it would not be the /Primum Principium/),
there simply cannot be anything more, there cannot be Infinite plus X.
Also, in order to be God, He must be without form,
because forms are limitations,
being thus and not otherwise. So God must be mere Consciousness.
And everything else, including myself,
should be thoughts of that Consciousness.
Because if God were to create something, where would he put it?
Not outside himself, there is not such a place,
but within himself, in his Consciousness,
and what do you call things existing only in consciousness? Mental objects.

So everything that can be seen, heard, touched, or in any way experienced
- is only a mental object in God's consciousness.

The problem with my then position was that it completely nullified me,
butI felt that I could not say: I do not exist, I am only a mental object.

Luckily, I later found Nisargadatta Maharaj,
who said that only the Absolute is,
and that I was That One.
And that was the end of my big problem.
There is really no myself (no Miguel Angel Carrasco),
because I am not this body, nor this mind,
nor anything at all, just an infinite potentiality,
which I express through my thoughts = the whole of the world.

Again, I feel that maybe i am oversimplifying,
and there are still some loose ends.
I am sorry if this position I am holding hurts any of my dear friends'
feelings.
Because it that happens, then certainly I am wrong.


On  Fri, 24 Oct 1997 Maadhavan Srinivasan wrote:

<I appreciate your wisdom. My doubt is if one lost his conciousness due to
some mental health problem and after some time regain it then what is your
explanation about these two states?<

Dear Maadhavan Srinivasan,

As I see it, there is only the One, and he is Consciousness.
Persons can appear to have consciousness, but it is just like
the moon reflected on the lake : mere appearance.
So any change, any loss and regain of "consciousness",
is only a passing thought in the Absolute's Mind.

Thank you all for your patience.